Synopsis
Sergei Eisenstein's Strike , with the possible exception of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane , marks the most outstanding cinematic debut in the history of film. Triggered by the suicide of a worker unjustly accused of theft, a strike is called by the laborers of a Moscow factory. The managers, owner and the Czarist government dispatch infiltrators in an attempt to break the workers' unity. Unsuccessful, they hire the police and in the film's most harrowing and powerful sequences, the unarmed strikers are slaughtered in a brutal confrontation. The strory, divided into six parts, was influenced by the amazing theatrical inventions of Vsevolod Meyerhold. Eisenstein experimented with the use of montage, parallel editing, expanded time, and the intercutting of symbolic images - the beginnings of the techniques that would change the look of cinema. To many, Eisenstein's first film - like Welles' - would remain his greatest work, surpassing even Potemkin in its power and sheer brilliance. This edition of Strike is digitally mastered at 18 frames per second from a mint-condition 35mm print made from the original camera negative. English subtitles are included below the original Russian titles. The music is composed and performed by the the Alloy Orchestra. Additionally, this DVD contains a new and illuminating audio commentary by Yuri Tsivian, Professor at the University of Chicago and one of the world's leading scholars of Russian and Soviet cinema.